TRUMP TRANSITION TEAM: Hits Back at CIA on Russian Election Hack–‘Same People Who Said Saddam Had WMDs’

HAHAHA Good point transition team. They still haven’t showed any evidence that hackers interfered with people’s actual votes. Were these emails information we needed to know? Cause we think so. Does that make what happened okay?

The CIA found that Russia’s interference with the presidential elections went beyond an attempt to undermine American democracy as a whole – and actively favored Donald Trump’s chances, it has been claimed.

Those who provided WikiLeaks with emails from hacked Democratic accounts have been identified by intelligence authorities as members of a Russian campaign who worked towards the goal of seeing Trump elected, officials told the Washington Post.

The shocking conclusion, made by a ‘consensus’ of intelligence agencies, was reported the same day President Barack Obama ordered a review of cyber attacks that targeted Democratic organizations and operatives during the 2016 elections.

But Trump’s transition team shot down the findings, issuing a statement that read: ‘These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.’

Confidential emails from the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, the Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, were steadily leaked on WikiLeaks in the months before the election, damaging her White House effort.

The US has previously tiptoed around Russia’s involvement in the elections, saying the goal was to undermine the American electoral system as a whole.

But intelligence agencies found the Russians also hacked the Republican National Committee, one official told the New York Times, even though those emails were never released.

The CIA presented the growing evidence during a secret meeting with a number of senators last week, with agents saying it had become ‘quite clear’ that the Russians were supporting a Trump victory, the Post reported.

One official who spoke to the Post described it as a ‘consensus view’, but not all 17 intelligence agencies agreed with the CIA’s findings.

While the individuals who handed the hacked emails to Wikileaks are known to the intelligence community, with links to the Russian government, there’s no evidence showing the Kremlin orchestrating their efforts, one official told the Post.

But the Russian government has been known to utilize middlemen in the past.

Others point to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s denial that the Russian government provided the emails of key Democratic party members.

Trump has also shot down signs pointing to Russian interference, telling TIME: ‘I don’t believe they interfered…Anytime I do something, they say “Oh, Russia interfered.”

He continued: ‘It could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.’